Spotlight on safety

With national Child Passenger Safety Week just two weeks away, several statewide agencies are banding together to implement a pilot program in three North Carolina counties, including Rockingham, to change the way law enforcement agencies and district attorney offices enforce child safety laws.

Currently, if someone is charged with improperly restraining a child – whether due to lack of child safety seat or misuse of that seat – those charges can often be dropped if the individual appears in court and presents a car seat to a judge as proof that a proper seat will be used from that point forward. Some safety advocates argue presenting a seat does not guarantee that seat is actually being used, and they think they have a better solution.

The North Carolina Governor’s Highway Safety Program, Safe Kids North Carolina and the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys have joined forces to implement a new way for people to prove they are using a properly-installed safety seat; instead of bringing a safety seat to court, offenders will hand a judge a piece of paper, documenting they’ve been to a certified safety seat checking station to correct their violation.

Rockingham County, along with Nash and Watauga counties, will be piloting this new system starting this month, in conjunction with Child Passenger Safety Week, which begins Sept. 19.

About a dozen local law enforcement officers met with District Attorney Phil Berger, N.C. Conference of District Attorneys chief resource prosecutor Kimberly Overton and Safe Kids North Carolina representative Kelly Ransdell Wednesday morning at Rockingham Community College to iron out the details for the local plan of action.

The idea is for officers, when issuing a ticket pertaining to child restraint safety, to refer offenders to one of Rockingham County’s two permanent seat checking stations: Fire Station No. 1 in Reidsville or Fire Station No. 4 in Eden. Capt. Gene Brown in Reidsville and Neil Chaney, co-chair of Safe Kids Rockingham County in Reidsville, are certified safety seat inspectors at those permanent stations.

Once someone has passed an inspection in Eden or Reidsville, they will leave with a completed child restraint inspection form in hand, noting the vehicle has a properly installed safety seat. Berger said his office welcomes the change and he thinks it can be an effective replacement of the current seat-presentation method.

Ransdell said Wednesday the goal is to get more parents to use proper child safety restraints. There is no way to prove the current methods – presenting an actual seat – are working. No one can be sure the seats are actually being used.

“We will have to have buy in” for this to be effective in these three counties and to later go into effect in other counties, Ransdell said.

For three months, from the end of September to the end of December, the three pilot counties will enact the new inspection-form policy, which remains in compliance with the law, Berger and Overton said.

Overton said the original child seat safety legislation does not specifically require the presentation of a safety seat, just that there is some sort of proof one is being used. Yet, over time, people have interpreted the law to mean a seat must be shown.

“This is not what the legislature intended,” Overton said.

This way, Overton said, someone – the inspector at the checking station – has actually seen for himself that a seat is properly installed.

“The goal is to get that young ’un in a seat,” Ransdell said.

The Reidsville Fire Department will host a seat crushing for old or unsafe seats Friday, Sept. 24. The location for the crushing has not yet been determined. Safe Kids Rockingham County will also have a seat check from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 25, at Woodmont United Methodist Church.